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Green Spotlight: Youth Lens

The 2016 Green Film Fest is shaping up to be the most exciting yet, with the farthest reach across different audiences and contributors. While our Green Community spans many diverse groups, our filmmaker spotlight today falls on our youth filmmakers represented at the 2016 Festival.

We are thrilled to feature several thoughtful young filmmakers who center their works around the environment, from bees to bicycling to community projects, our young filmmakers tell it all through their own unique lenses.

Young Filmmaker Award

The Green Film Fest is delighted to be awarding our Young Filmmaker Award to 18 year-old James Tralie for his film Escape Velocity.

The film centers around a young boy struggling to find beauty in the world around him. Trapped in a world of pollution, landfills, and gray skies, the boy wants to escape from Earth and travel to the far reaches of the beautiful universe.

Film Contests

A number of youth films at Green Film Fest came to us through contests that we support throughout the year.

As part of the Climate Action Film Contest, the Festival challenged filmmakers to use their talents to talk about positive environmental solutions to the problem of climate change. The result brought us several wonderful youth-made films that we are showing in the festival.

The Art of Bicycling by Arshad Muhammad (BAYCAT/High School Filmmaker) introduces us to Bay Area visual artist Chris McNally, and the symbiotic relationship that art and bicycling hold in his life.

Walk to School by Mitchell Rusitzky (K-8 Filmmaker) invites us to join a San Francisco Student on his daily walk to school and tells us the benefits that walking brings to a community.

Zombees by D'Arion Curry-Matthews (BAYCAT/High School Filmmaker) tells of a new type of parasite that affecting our bees, uncovered by SFSU's own John Hafernik.

The past few years we've supported theClear the Air Film Festival - a showcase for student-produced short films that address topics on air quality, environmental health and lung health in the community - by showing their winning film at Green Film Fest.

This year's winning film Breathlessby Ben Howley, is about asthma and our need to respect the environment.

Reel Stories: Keep It Wild

The Festival aims to inspire young people to pick up a camera and share their story. Our youth filmmaker workshop is an opportunity for teens to learn how to write, shoot and edit a film.

This unique workshop at The Mix at SFPL on April 9, will be on the theme Keep It Wild. The completed short films will be shown as part of the Keep It Wild - shorts program during the Festival.